The Jewel of No Return
by roisaber
Summary: The Black Widow comes by a jewel of the rarest pedigree, or at least, that's what the dealer tells her. Is it the real deal, or is it all just a tempest in a teapot?


**The Jewel of No Return**

"You have a keen eye, miss," the hook-nosed proprietor suggested from behind the counter.

_Could you _stop_ being stereotypical?_ Natalia thought, but didn't say.

Instead, she leaned down and peered at the little earrings. They glittered fiercely under the bright LED lighting of the jeweler's boutique, catching her attention time and time again like a kitten following the dot of a laser. She had to have them.

"They're cute, I guess," she allowed. "I'm not sure what I have that I can wear them with, though."

The Jew leaned forward conspiratorially. "If you want it, you'll have to act fast. The government of Tanzania has put very high excise taxes on tourmaline in order to reduce large companies strip mining for the gem. My wholesaler is having trouble coming by suitable replacements for stock when it sells."

Natalia pretended to vacillate.

"How much?" she finally asked.

The jeweler answered without hesitation. "$1400."

Natalia hissed in irritation. It's not that she didn't have the money, it was just clear that the greedy, two-faced Sheeny was trying to rip her off. She responded with a characteristic Eastern European penchant for haggling.

"That's twice what it's worth," she replied imperiously. "I'll give you $750."

The dealer just laughed and made a motion as if to put the earrings back in their box.

"No, that won't do at all," he replied.

Natalia watched him put them back into the case, and she jutted out her chin angrily, waiting for the jeweler to come forth with a counteroffer. He finally paused, shifted on his feet, and gave in.

"I suppose I could let it go for $1100," he admitted.

Natalia pulled her wallet out of her purse, and ostentatiously counted out eleven $100 bills from a billfold filled to the brim with currency. The jeweler watched her greedily, no doubt kicking himself inwardly for not holding out for a higher sum. Finally, he shrugged, counted the bills twice, and then slid the box of earrings across the glass counter to Natalia. She took it and vanished it into her purse.

"Thank you," Natalia said with exaggerated politesse.

"A pleasure doing business," the jeweler muttered in reply.

Natalia stepped out into the steamy streets of New York City.

New Yorkers insist, loudly, that they live in the most beautiful city in the world. Either New Yorkers have never actually left New York, or they protest too much in order to be heard over the sound of cabbies swearing at pedestrians, couriers honking, police shouting for the nearest black man to get down on the ground with his hands on his head, and the non-stop wailing of sirens. New York City is covered by a pungent miasma year-round. The odor of fresh urine wafts through the streets mingled with the scent of freshly-baked bread, leading to a visceral sense of disgust in anyone with a functioning sense of smell. To outsiders, New York City is a glittering turd squeezed out onto what was, before its presence, a beautiful bay.

Natalia Romanova loved the city. After growing up in Stalingrad during the days of the Soviet Union, New York City felt just like home. Even in May it was still cold, and she was grateful for the skin-tight PVC bodysuit that kept her percolating in her own sweat. She wore a light pleather jacket on top, a thin nod to the city's ongoing chill. She felt she'd spent more than enough money for one day, so she got on the train that would take her back to her apartment building in the fashionable TriBeCa district. The one nice thing about living in NYC is that she didn't have long to wait; she was on board a subway car in minutes.

"Hey, pretty lady!" boomed the deep, accented voice of the inner city black male.

The first and second rule of riding the subway was to ignore the other passengers, up to and including actually being taken hostage by gunmen. What you didn't give the time of day couldn't hurt you.

The voice insisted, "Hey Red, I'm talking to you!"

Natalia carefully ignored him.

The man sauntered over, and she finally turned to deal with her interlocutor. Everyone else on the train carefully surveilled their newspapers and iPhones.

"What?" Natalia demanded angrily.

The man towered over her already tall form. He was wearing a hoodie and his jeans were slung far below his ass, exposing his underwear to anyone who'd care to look, which was no one. Natalia eyed him with disinterest.

"My name's Jamaar. Gimmie yo number."

Natalia was torn between being amused and being genuinely angry. What she wasn't was impressed.

"Why would I want to do that?" she asked, Slavic-accented consonants rolling languidly off her tongue.

"I kin sho' yo a good time," Jamaar replied confidently.

The tableau broke, and Natalia decided to be amused. Before Jamaar could react, she took a step forward, stood up on her tip toes, and gave him a kiss. He was just about to push back into her kiss when she bit down, hard. Her sharp canines pierced the soft flesh of his lips, drawing a thin dribble of blood.

"What the fuck!?" Jamaar shouted, stepping back from her in horror.

The Black Widow answered, "You couldn't handle a good time with me."

Jamaar got off the train at the next stop without even glancing back at Natalia.

Without further incident, she got off at the transfer station and then got on the next train that would lead her back to her apartment building. Her apartment took up most of the fiftieth floor of a sixty five story residential skyscraper, and it was far bigger than it had any right to be. After defecting, Natalia had taken to American capitalism like a duck to water. She quickly licensed rights to her life and likeness to everything from Dr. Pepper to Acura. The cherry on top of her sundae was when Disney offered her fifteen million dollars to secure the rights to a movie about her exploits, and her lawyer had urged her to take it with breathless excitement. So, she lived a good life when she wasn't busy with her work with the collection of renegades, louts, and drones that made up the Avengers. She took the high speed elevator up to her floor and plopped down on her leather couch with a puff.

Natalia found relaxation to be hard work. No matter how dangerous her adventures could get, it helped get her mind off herself. Sitting alone in her apartment left her with a great sense of emptiness. Perhaps that was the source of her promiscuity and blatant sexual aggression. There was already a bottle of vodka ready at hand, left over from the previous night, and in rapid succession she took three shots of warm booze out of the dirty, leftover shotglass.

"Я _очень_ скучно," she complained in her native tongue.

But, of course, there was no one in her apartment to answer her.

Natalia turned on the television to drown her boredom in high volume stupidity. She especially liked talk shows, the bad ones, the ones where every day was a new parade of circus freaks and self-effacing attention whores. She took another few shots of vodka and welcomed the warmth flooding her belly. Natalia decided that she was too lazy to go get a meal out, and instead, she'd order up Chinese from a nearby restaurant. One honest thing that can be said for New York is the vast variety and availability of international cuisine, and Natalia placed a call to one of her favorite restaurants.

She stripped off her bodysuit, threw it into the pile of clothes on her floor, and selected a nightgown that left just enough to the imagination that she wasn't ashamed to answer the door in it. After downing another shot of vodka and idly watching the local news, there was finally a knock at her door. She paid, tipped, and ate herself silly. Another shot of vodka and she felt ready for bed, pausing only long enough to take a shower to sluice off the heavy sweat that collected on her skin over the course of wearing the unbreathable material.

Her cellphone woke her up at 0940 the next morning. With a groan, she picked it up and answered.

"Да?" she asked, too hungover to bother with English.

"Natalia, where are you?" an insistent voice from SHEILD demanded. "Our meeting was supposed to start almost an hour ago! Are you still in _bed_?"

She looked at her bedside clock with some surprise.

"Чёрт! I'll be there in fifteen minutes."

"Make it ten," Fury commanded before slamming down his phone.

Natalia rushed to assemble another close-fitting PVC outfit, complimenting it with her most recent jewelry purchase, and then headed down to the garage to grab her motorcycle. She normally preferred to take the subways, not wanting to deal with New York City street traffic, but since she was already running so late she didn't want to risk showing her face at the office any later. She wove in and out of traffic, heedless of the annoyed stares and honks of the cars around her. At 1010 she finally pulled into the parking garage of StarkTower, and took the elevator up to the penthouse, where the Avengers often met for their conferences.

"Nice of you to finally show up," Tony said acidly the moment she stepped off the elevator.

Natalia didn't bother to lie. "I forgot to set an alarm last night."

"Be that as it may," Fury interrupted before the rest of the group could chime in with their admonishments, "it's late enough already so let's get started."

Natalia swore inwardly; Fury already had a Powerpoint presentation queued up for their debriefing.

"Eighty six billion dollars," he said, seemingly à propos of nothing and backed only by that figure written starkly in red text on a teal background.

"What?" Stark asked, somewhat taken aback.

Funny; even Tony Stark was startled by such a prodigious figure.

Fury continued, "That's the number that insurance adjusters have complied so far. It's been two months and claims are _still_ rolling in. Gentlemen – and lady – what exactly do you propose that I tell them?"

Natalia zoned out. So, it was going to be _that_ sort of meeting. She tried to look interested as Nick Fury droned on for several hours about the costs associated with repelling the most recent alien assault. Casualties had been in the hundreds of thousands, and as for damages, well, the estimate Fury had just provided was still probably lowballing it. Citizen groups were furious, and there were protests outside the Avenger's Mansion and StarkTower on a daily basis. Naturally, even Tony Stark himself didn't have anywhere near the amount of money required to pay restitution to those affected. Several insurance giants had gone out of business, unable to uphold their end of the contracts. Natalia let Fury's, well, fury, simply roll off her back. She'd done everything she could.

Finally, Nick let his ranting stutter to a halt. As far as Natalia could tell, the net result was, "Good job, you bunch of fuckups. Now don't ever do anything like that again." And honestly, what was anyone going to do to them? Was the government going to impound Stark's Iron Man suit? Not likely – there were benefits associated with saving the world.

"You're dismissed," Fury finally said, still seething.

He turned and stormed out of the building. The moment he was out of earshot, Tony turned to the rest of the Avengers with a broad smile.

"Drinks, anyone?" he asked.

Natalia answered languidly, "Sure."

Hawkeye shook his head. "I have to go … wash my hair."

Captain America also begged off. As for Thor, he wasn't there; he only showed up for emergencies, and even Nick Fury didn't dare to get on his case about it. Soon just Tony, Natalia, and Bruce Banner were sitting at a table on the spacious deck of StarkTower, sipping Bloody Marys and bantering about nothing.

"Nick sure had his panties in a bunch," Stark observed aloud.

The professor shrugged. "The government is probably up his ass. Saving the world doesn't mean much to our congressmen if they don't get reëlected afterwards."

"People are stupid," Tony agreed. "We stopped an alien invasion and all anybody does it bitch about it. It makes you wonder why we even try."

Bruce looked over at Natalia. "I like your earrings. You don't usually wear much jewelry. Are they tourmaline?"

"Да."

"Style on a budget. I like that."

Natalia blinked. "What do you mean?"

"They look really good on you, and for a couple hundred dollars you got a lot more value than you might have gained by spending five times as much on something rarer."

Natalia smiled, but inwardly she was crushed. She should have known that jeweler was ripping her off. She made a few more minutes of vacuous conversation, finished her Bloody Mary, and then fucked off for the rest of the day. With growing indignation, she made her way back to the jeweler who'd cheated her.

The man looked up in surprise when she stormed into his shop, the bell over his door ringing furiously.

"How can I help you?" he asked cautiously.

"These stones are worth a fraction of what you sold them to me for," Natalia hissed, slamming the box down on the counter. "I want my money back."

With a shrug, the man gestured to a sign hanging below the counter. Natalia read it for the first time.

**NO**

_Returns_

_Exchanges_

_Exceptions_

"I don't care! You ripped me off."

"I sold you something you wanted and you agreed to the price. You've got nobody to blame but yourself," the Jew told her dispassionately.

Natalia brought her fist down on the glass countertop.

"I _demand_ my money back!" she insisted.

"Please! You're making a scene. You're banned from this store. If you don't leave immediately, I'm calling the cops."

Shaking with rage, Natalia collected the box and stalked out of the shop's front door.

"You haven't heard the last of me!" she vowed.

The beginnings of a plan were already percolating in Natalia's head. The moral rightness of her cause was unimpeachable – the proprietor had deceived her, and he had no right to deny her a rightful refund. Naturally, he had no idea who he was dealing with, but Natalia was going to show him. She cased the street a couple times, searching the nearby buildings for access points and looking for easily pickable door locks. The area was five and six story buildings, with shops on street level and apartments or offices up above. Behind it was a narrow alleyway, where trucks made their deliveries and where trash was left to molder in tin waste cans. Finally, Natalia settled on the back door. It looked a little harder to pick than some of the others, but it would keep her from having to go through any other buildings before entering the jeweler's shop.

She did a little shopping trip while waiting for afternoon to turn into dusk and then night. She bought a black balaclava, a pair of black leather gloves, and then returned to her apartment to collect her lockpicking kit. Spying and sneaking was her undeniable forté, and she was confident that the meager security systems were no match for her extensive training. She did some Internet searches, tapping memory of the lock's brand and shape from her memory, searching for schematics for the deadbolt and the security system. At 2300 hours, she struck. She hefted an inconspicuous duffle bag and made her way back to the closed jeweler's.

First, she knocked on the rear door. She might be giving herself away in some sense, but if the proprietor was still inside the shop, she'd rather deal with him immediately rather than be caught by surprise when she was halfway through the job. No one answered so she crouched down and got to work on the deadbolt. It was an older model but still tough. Nevertheless, it was no match for years of KGB training. Before the homeless man behind her could even finish shitting in a garbage can, the lock snapped open.

Next, she had to deal with the security system. She traced the wires and saw them creep up the side of the building, and with a curse, she limbered up and then grabbed a drainage pipe leading to the roof. Dragging herself up the side of the building was pure grunt work, and the homeless man watched her in astonishment as she jumped from one ledge to the next on the way to the top. She didn't worry much about him calling the police, though; men like him saw many strange things in the city, and they kept their mouths shut. She finally traced the wire to a breaker box, prised it open with a flathead screwdriver, and then reached inside and cut the wire to the appropriate fuse. Natalia made her way back down the side of the building, confident that the system was disabled.

The door opened with a squeak, but there was no sign of anyone stirring or any alarms being activated. She scanned the dark room with a red-filtered flashlight. The red lens helped keep the glare from being visible outside the small shop. The elderly cash register opened with a ring and Natalia reached inside and grabbed a handful of bills. Fortunately, the idiot was far too confident of an easily-disabled alarm system, and he left the money in the register for days at a time. She carefully counted out eleven $100 bills, and then put the rest back in the drawer. Next, she pulled the earrings out of her purse, carefully wiped it down inside and out with specially formulated wipes to clean up any fingerprints, and left it pointedly on the center of the glass counter.

Natalia snuck out of the building with a smirk, pleased with another job well done.


End file.
